October, Month of the Holy Rosary: Words of Wisdom, Piety, and Filial Love from Popes St. John Paul II and Pius XI

3. Among the several characteristic signs of Christian piety, devotion to the Virgin Mary occupies a very special place, corresponding to the condition of the Mother of God and our Mother. Like that woman in the Gospel who let out a cry of admiration and happiness for Jesus and his Mother, as you, with your love and your devotion you usually always uniting Mary to Jesus. You understand that the Virgin leads us to her divine Son and that these always hears the supplications who asked his mother. The eternal union of the Virgin Mary with her Son is a confidential sign and full of faith of her maternal mission, as well as a demonstration of the words addressed in Cana: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2: 5). Mary always exhorts us to be faithful to the Gospel, as [she was]; His life was indeed a witness of fidelity to the word and the will of the Father.

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I wish to exhort you in a special way to pray the Rosary which is a source of deep Christian life. Try to recite it every day, alone or with your family, repeating with great faith the fundamental Christian prayers, which are the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary and the Glory. Meditate scenes from the life of Jesus and Mary, which remind us of the mysteries of joy, sorrow and glory. You will learn as well in the joyful mysteries to think about Jesus who is poor and little did(sic): a baby! For us, to serve us, and you will feel compelled to serve others in their needs. In the sorrowful mysteries you will realize that to accept with docility and love the sufferings of life – like Christ in his passion -, it leads to happiness and the joy that is expressed in the glorious mysteries of Christ and of Mary, waiting for the eternal life.

5. The rosary is a real interview with Mary, our heavenly Mother. In the Rosary we speak to Mary so that she may intercede for us with her Son Jesus. So we speak to God through Mary.

Get used, dear young people, to pray the rosary in this way. It is not so much to repeat the formulas, but rather to talk to people live on a living person, that if you do not see with the eyes of the body, but you can see with the eyes of faith . Mary, in fact, and his Son, Jesus, living in the sky a lot more “living life” of this our – mortal – that we live here on earth.

The rosary is a confidential conversation with Mary, a talk full of confidence and abandonment. It is a confide in our grief, a manifest them our hopes, our hearts an[d] open them. A declare to him for all that she, on behalf of his Son, we will ask. A promise faithfulness in every circumstance, even the most painful and difficult, sure of his protection, confident that, if we ask, she will always be there by her Son all the graces necessary for our salvation.

13. In this regard, it is to be noted that both piety and love, though always renewing the same words, do not always repeat the same thing but always express something new issuing from the intimate sentiment of devotion. And besides, this mode of prayer has the perfume of evangelic simplicity and requires humility of spirit; and, if we disdain humility, as the Divine Redeemer teaches, it will be impossible for us to enter the heavenly kingdom: “Amen, I say to you, unless you become as little children you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. xviii, 3).